Stormy Weather: The Challenge of Climate Change and Displacement
(David Corlett, UNSW Press, 2008, pp. 7-11 & 41-43)
The Great Flood
In late February 2006, a handful of journalists and a sprinkling of tourists
converged on Tuvalu. It was king tide season, but this was a king tide of a
different order. Seawater flooded Fongafale, the main islet on Funafuti atoll,
the capital of Tuvalu. Water bubbled up, oozing, from underground. Some
local residents waded knee-deep in water, others paddled kayaks near their
homes. Houses on the lower parts of the islet were inundated. The extent of
the flooding was unprecedented.
It was a sensational story. The media saw what it came to find: the new
Atlantis. Tuvalu has long been seen as the nation most likely to sink as the
sea level rises as a result of climate change. And although Tuvaluans
number only eleven thousand, migration from this small Pacific island nation
will be part of a much larger movement of people – from Kiribati, Indonesia,
China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, from Southern Africa and the Sahel, and
from the countries of South America – caused by climate change-related
factors. In the same way that the melting of polar ice has been seen as the
“canary in the mine” for climate change, the dislocation of Tuvaluans is
viewed as a sign of the broader displacement of potentially hundreds of
millions of people as a result of the changes to the Earth’s climate.
The especially high king tides of 2006 looked like climate change in action:
global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions causing the thermal
expansion of the oceans and melting the world’s great glaciers. The flooding
of Tuvalu, a nation consisting of three reef islands and six coral atolls more
than 4000 kms northeast of Sydney, just south of the equator and just west
of the international dateline, was considered to be proof that the global
environment was in turmoil. Yet it wasn’t as straightforward as this.
The media and the other spectators had some time to plan for the king tides
of 2006. Two years earlier the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate
Monitoring Project had predicted particularly high tides for 2006. The
Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s National Tide Centre warned that the
2006 king tides would be the highest for the period 1990 to 2016. And rather
than sea level rises due to climate change, Fiji’s Meteorological Service said
that the unusually high tides were due to the coincidence of the closest new
moon to Earth for 2006 and high normal tidal factors. 1 That the phenomenon
had been foreseen did not, however, make living through the experience any
easier. The unprecedented 2006 king tide was alarming. It reinforced
Tuvaluans’ awareness of their vulnerability as citizens of one of the lowest
countries in the world, a country with an average elevation of less than two
metres above sea level. It also was consistent with other changes they had
been noticing in their natural environment over the past couple of decades.
More than a year later, after the world’s media had gone home, Tuvalu’s
vulnerability was once again apparent. In the hours before dawn on 17 April
2007, Tufitu Lotee’s extended family was asleep in their houses in the south
of the boomerang-shaped islet of Fongafale. To the east is the vast Pacific
Ocean. To the west is the lagoon, a body of water surrounded by the reefs
and islets that make up the atoll. Where Tufitu lives, the land between the
ocean on one side and the lagoon on the other is no wider than a hundred
metres.
For some reason, in the small hours of this particular morning, Tufitu could
not sleep. She was reading a book, but she sensed that something was not
right. “I heard the sound from the sea,” Tufitu told me. “Big waves. So I got
up and just went to check up. And then I saw the waves were just right at the
shore, coming up as usual. So I went back. But I couldn’t sleep because in
my heart I felt that something was going to happen that night. Three times I
went to check up. And on the fourth I saw a big wave is coming up. I saw the
big waves. I just saw big waves were coming in.”
Tufitu lives on the “ocean side” of the islet in a cluster of three houses, one
of which is made of traditional pandanus thatch, with her husband, mother,
brother, her brother’s wide and children, her sister and her cousin. Between
the ocean and the homes of Tufitu’s family is a bank of old, dead coral, no
more than a half a dozen metres wide. There are pigs caged on the bank
and a hammock strung between a couple of trees, then the bank falls away
and the land flattens out. It is here that the houses begin. When I talked to
Tufitu I could see the lagoon across the road between the houses and trees;
behind me I could hear the sound of the waves breaking on the reef.
Sitting on an old concrete slab – a reminder of the house that once stood
there – Tufitu went on to tell me that when she saw the waves coming early
that April morning she went to wake her family. A wave crashed over the
bank and the rest of the neighbourhood woke up. One house was hit,
according to a report to Tuvalu’s Secretary to Government, throwing stones
and rubble into the rooms where the family was sleeping.
The sea not only came over the bank; it also seeped out from under the
ground. Tufitu has a mark on her house indicating the level to which the
water rose. The whole area flooded. According to the government report,
written by Sumeo Situ, the disaster coordinator in the Prime Minister’s office,
the water rose by between 700 and 800 mm. A second set of waves surged
over the bank not long after the first.
“The water surrounded us,” Tufitu told me. “The water was around us,
coming up. And the people, they were helping one another. They were
carrying our children over there. And one man came and asked us to take all
our children up there, to the high places, to the road, otherwise an electric
shock may happen at that time.”
A similar wave surge had occurred during daytime in 2002. “But last year,”
Tufitu said, “it happened in the night. So we were fast asleep and we didn’t
know what was going to happen. Imagine that: we were all fast asleep and it
just happened. And there was no wind when it happened. There was no
wind. Only the huge waves that we could hear: boom! boom! boom! I heard
it that night. I couldn’t sleep that night. What I felt, I really felt frightened.
Fear. We were really concerned about the children, and also myself. I just
prayed to the Almighty, to help us. Because there is no other place that we
can go to.”
As daylight broke, the first evacuated family – ten adults and twelve children
– was taken to a Red Cross centre in the main village. Another eight
families, totaling forty-six adults and sixty-one children, including Tufitu’s,
soon followed. Some were housed in the Red Cross centre, while others
went to stay with other family on the islet or were accommodated in a
falekaupule or village meeting hall.
The cause or causes of that wave surge are not clear. According to Tauala
Katea, scientific officer and acting director of Tuvalu’s Meteorological Office,
there was no weather system that could have caused the surge. A small
earthquake near Tonga may have been the cause. Climate change might
also have had an impact. Rising sea levels could have meant that waves
that would normally be stopped by the coral bank were able to wash over it.
Coastal erosion due to sea level rise might also have been a factor. Tufutu
believes it is: “the island is starting to get eaten up. It is getting narrower and
narrower and narrower. I believe those people who talk about global
warming and weather changing. I believe that.”
In response to this emerging threat, locals, with the support of the
government and the Red Cross, have started to plant trees to stop the
erosion. They are also taking other precautions. “We have started to build up
a wall of stones since last year,” Tufitu told me. I walked around to the ocean
side of the houses, where a small dry wall of coral rocks had been
constructed. “We started to build it. But it has started to be eaten up. You
can already see some stones have been washed out. It is always changing.
The stones and the sand. It is always moving around. I don’t know where the
sea takes those stones and the sand.”
It is difficult to know conclusively whether climate change is one of the
factors responsible for the erosion. But if you ask Tuvaluans many tell you
about changes they can see happening in their local environment, changes
they say are not normal – changes that are consistent with what we know
about the impacts of climate change.
[…]
Some are already considering relocation. At a recent Tuvalu Trust Fund
meeting, representatives discussed the possibility of buying land, possibly in
Fiji, on which to resettle Tuvaluans. Another suggestion is that they could
move to Kioa, a Fijian Island already owned by Tuvaluans who moved there
from 1947 due to fears that their home island, Vaitupu, would become
overcrowded.59 In 2001, the BBC reported that the Tuvalu government had
approached Australia and New Zealand to accept Tuvaluans forced to flee
their homeland due to climate change. According to a government official,
Paani Laupepa, “New Zealand responded positively in the true Pacific way
of helping one’s neighbours, Australia on the other hand has slammed the
door in our face.”60
Sitting in his office on the top floor of the tallest building in Tuvalu, the threestorey government offices, the secretary of the Foreign Affairs Department
Enele Sopoaga told me that Tuvalu made no such request. Rather, he said,
Tuvalu continues to maintain confidence that the international community
can stop global warming. “I think the message is this from the IPCC: these
are the threats, this is what is going to happen, but if we work together, we
can save this by doing this – one, two, three. And the urgency is there and
we must do it now.” According to Enele, there are real options for mitigating
and adapting to climate change: “They are doable, they are reachable.”
Talk of migration or displacement due to climate change is premature, Enele
told me. Indeed, it is not even on the international agenda. Partly this is
strategic. The need right now is to focus on mitigation and adaptation; to
speak of migration is to “introduce another item that would divert attention
from this.” But as I sat in his office in the government building, it was difficult
not to wonder if placing so much trust in the ongoing international
negotiations to deal with climate change might be more similar to the faith
many have in the Rainbow Covernant than Enele Sopoaga might care to
admit.
The popular perception across the world is that Tuvalu will “go under,” that it
will sink beneath the sea if the international community fails to curb and then
wind back greenhouse gas emissions. If this were to occur, then the entire
population will be displaced. They will become, in the unfortunate language
of the media and some academics, “climate change refugees.” Picture food
drops and blue helmets and Hercules airplanes picking up stranded people.
Yet while Tuvalu may ultimately be a victim of global sea level rise, the
reality of displacement due to climate-related factors may be far less
dramatic. The most recent report by the IPCC has two chapters that are
relevant, one dealing with small islands and the other with coastal systems
and low-lying areas.61 According to the IPCC, the risks to countries like
Tuvalu are multiple and complex, interacting with other local environmental
factors. Climate change threatens the food and freshwater security of
coastal and low-lying communities. Sea water incursion into arable land and
water supplies, erosion and land loss due to rising sea and surges, drought,
and damage to ecosystems (including to coral reefs as a result of warming
seas) will all undermine crop growth, subsistence food resources and water
supplies. This will contribute to extreme food and water stress.
Increasingly frequent and extreme weather events will result in death and
injury. Food and freshwater resources will be damaged. Small island
communities will have no inland haven when their coasts are battered.
Climate change is projected to lead to an increase in diseases borne by
insects, food and water. Malaria, dengue, diarrhoea, heat stress, skin
diseases, acute respiratory infection, asthma and other illnesses are
predicted to rise.62 As well as these physical illnesses, the IPCC predicts an
increase in common mental disorders as a result of the new stresses
associated with climate change.63 The health implications of global warming
will be exacerbated by the impacts on vital infrastructure, such as hospitals
and roads. Inundation, erosion, and other extreme weather events will
undermine health and transport systems, affecting food delivery, for
example, and access to health care.64
All this may well lead to displacement.
[…]
Endnotes
1
Tuvalu News, “Brisbane Journalist in Tuvalu for Extreme High Tides,” 13 February
2006, http://www.tuvaluislands.com; Ricardo Morris, ‘Meteorologists Warn of King Tides to
Sweep in Today,’ Pacific Magazine, 28 February 2006.
[…]
59
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kioa.
60
Alex Kirby, “Pacific Islanders Flee Rising Seas,” BBC News, 9 October 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1581457.stm.
61
N. Mimura et al, “Small Islands,” op cit, pp 687-716; R. J. Nicholls et al, “Coastal
Systems and Low-Lying Areas,” pp. 315-356.
62
N. Mimura et al, “Small Islands,” op cit, p. 689.
63
Ibid, p. 701.
64
Ibid, p. 702.